CREEPSHOW
1982, Warner Bros., 120 min. Dir. George Romero.
There hadn’t been a lot of anthology movies when the George Romero/Stephen King collaboration CREEPSHOW, a film inspired by classic EC horror comics, debuted in 1982; in comparison to the sober, big budget thrills of POLTERGEIST and THE THING, the Romero/King effort was a refreshing blast of B-movie fun, low on budget and ambition, but with a surprisingly good cast: Hal Holbrook, EG Marshall, Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Ed Harris, Fritz Weaver and Stephen King himself. "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill," the segment with King (as an incredibly stupid farmer), is probably the most memorable even though it’s a short vignette compared to the others -- it’s a deft takeoff of THE BLOB and a riff on those moronic victims in 50’s sci-fi movies who always want to be first in line to check out that strange light coming from over the next rise. 35mm

GARGOYLES
1972, 74 min. Dir. Bill L. Norton.
Cornel Wilde and Jennifer Salt star in this made-for-TV movie as a scientist and his daughter who excavate a strange skeleton from the Arizona desert, unleashing an army of Stan Winston-designed gargoyles in the process. 35mm

THE THING
1982, Universal, 109 min.
Director John Carpenter took the 1951 sci-fi classic THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, produced by Howard Hawks, and turned it into something darker, fiercer and altogether more disturbing, pitting sombrero-wearing helicopter pilot Kurt Russell and a crew of Arctic scientists (Wilford Brimley, Donald Moffat, Richard Dysart) against a ravenous, shape-shifting alien being. From the haunting opening shots of a sled dog fleeing across the snow, to the apocalyptic, fire-and-ice ending, this ranks with Ridley Scott’s ALIEN as one of the finest (and most beautifully crafted) sci-fi films of the past 30 years. The film was terribly underrated by critics on its initial release, but its stock has constantly risen in the ensuing decades as one of the most intelligent, scary and uncompromising horror films of the 1980s. Also starring Keith David and David Clennon. DCP

THE NIGHT OF A THOUSAND CATS
(LA NOCHE DE LOS MIL GATOS), 1972, 63 min. Dir. René Cardona Jr.
A playboy (Hugo Stiglitz) lures beautiful women to his palatial home to kill them and feed their bodies to cats – lots and lots of them. With Anjanette Comer. 35mm

THE DEADLY SPAWN
1983, 81 min. Dir. Douglas McKeown.
A meteorite crashes near a New Jersey town, carrying with it an alien creature whose taste for human flesh and rapid reproduction cycle imperils local teens Charles George Hildebrandt and Tom DeFranco. 35mm

ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST
(aka DOCTOR BUTCHER, M.D.), 1980, 84 min. Dir. Marino Girolami.
In this Italian-made gore-fest, a New York City hospital worker who had been munching on bodies in the morgue leads a doctor (Ian McCulloch) and an anthropology expert (Alexandra Delli Colli) to the Asian Molucca islands, where they get caught between cannibals and zombies. Digital

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